Gah. What?
OK, I'm kind of speechless. I probably shouldn't admit it, because it's a tv show, ffs, but I've been crying constantly for the last hour, and I've totally got to stop, just because I've got to clean the house before people come over to watch all 5 episodes on UKTV. God, I'm not even sure I can rewatch it without blubbering and making an absolute fool of myself, but I think I owe it to the show to give it a full viewing. These people are going to mock me so badly, especially because they're not fans of the show, like, really at all.
But yes.
I'm devastated. Completely. That series was the most amazing, brilliant, well-crafted piece of television I've seen in the longest time - maybe ever. And I know that I totally don't have critical distance (er, apparently...), but I really, truly think that was something special.
Thing is, it just doesn't feel like Torchwood.
I'm finding it hard to articulate exactly why, but I just got the growing feeling throughout this series that - somehow - this just wasn't my show anymore. I mean, I loved it. Don't get me wrong. As I've said, I think it was spectacular. But this series took almost everything I loved about the show, stripped it away, killed it deader than dead, and stomped on it for good measure. And I get that it's good drama, and I think it would have worked, if the previous two series had never existed, or if I'd never watched them. And I get that it was a reboot. But it felt like it was aimed squarely at the new BBC1 audience, which of course is a solid commercial decision, and good writing-to-your-audience (because, let's face it, fans are a tiny minority when you're talking about 6 million viewers), but still. It just didn't feel like my show anymore.
Which is not to say that I didn't love it. I loved the bits we got with the team, I loved the development of the relationships, the development of the characters. I loved that in episode 3, I thought Ianto was safe, and all the rumours were just nonsense, and then by the end of episode 4 I was blubbering away at my desk at work, much to the amusement/pity of my coworkers (er, I hid the blubbering part, but they still knew I was sad over the death of a fictional character).
But - I don't know. Maybe it was just too bleak. Maybe I should just hand in my goth card now (shut up, Ben!), but this was far too fucking dark for my tastes, especially when I care so ridiculously hard about these characters.
I could barely watch Jack when he sacrificed his own fuckign grandson to the aliens, or the look on his face when Alice wouldn't even be in the same room as him, especially when it came so soon after that scene where it looked like they were finally going to have some sort of reconciliation. Though I think I was broken from the moment he said to take Gwen away, because he couldn't even bear to look at her. OH JACK.
But yes.
Bloody Torchwood. I should have known. Seriously, this show has always been bleak and dark and depressing and about loss and pain and death, but there's always been hope. Hope in the love and friendships between the team, between Jack and Ianto, between Owen and Tosh, between Gwen and Rhys, between Jack and the Doctor. Hope. That's what I loved about Torchwood. It was painful, but it was cathartic. There was always something to keep living for - something Jack needed desperately. But this series had no hope at all. It was just fucking bleak and dark and painful. And at the end of it all, Jack is back to being even worse off than he was in series 1, and it's like all of that character development over the last two series - that character development that was the entire show, all that love and loss and death and pain and magic of this tiny little team trying their hardest to save things, but often fucking them up and losing far more than any of the people they were trying to save but still being able to fall back on each other - has just been reversed. It's gone. It might as well never have happened (and yes, I get that it having happened makes the loss of it more poignant, but if that's its only purpose, I'm trying to think of ways that it doesn't cheapen it).
I just - I don't get it. I mean, I do, and it works, and works well, if it was a one-off series, with new characters. But it really does feel like the whole two series of Torchwood that we all loved so much have just been erased. And I know they haven't, and I'm just being overwrought because I'm sad, but still. What's changed at the end of this episode? Gwen's not in Torchwood, she's in a happy relationship with her husband, Ianto's dead, and Jack is back to worse than he was before he found the Doctor. It's fucking bleak.
Can't this show ever have a happy ending? Just once?
I mean, in an artistic sense, I'm always one for ambiguity, for open endings and situations where the onus of any moral decisions falls on the audience, not the show/book/movie to announce what the right decision was, what the wrong decision was, and who the good/bad guys were. I adore shows that don't tell you those things, that don't proselytise, and that let the horror of the situation play out, and characters' actions condemn or vindicate them, rather than some manipulative authorial voice. I remember a critical theory lecturer said to me once that if a piece of art tells you what to think, then it's not art, it's propaganda. I completely agree with this viewpoint. And that's a big part of the reason I think this show was a masterpiece. Frobisher's ending was just astoundingly done, and it even made me feel sorry for him.
But - as much as I adore moral ambiguity and bleak endings in my stories, apparently I feel a bit differently about things that I'm fannish about. I've never had anything fannish hit me quite this hard. Not even Sirius. Lupin. Snape. None of them. I'm just utterly gutted - about the deaths, about the characters, about where the whole show ended up.
And I'm not sure I see any way back from it.
Don't get me wrong, the journey was brilliant. We got some amazing scenes, some lovely insights, some heartbreaking revelations. I adored this series, just as much as I hated it.
It's just - they start making it good, developing these characters and relationships in ways that they've been avoiding for the past two series (mainly out of lack of a show bible and a clear understanding of where the show was going, not out of a conscious artistic decision, which always disappointed me a hell of a lot). And then they systematically disassemble every single defining feature of teh show.
The ending, though. Jack without Torchwood just breaks my fucking heart. He needs Torchwood - it's all he has, and immortal Jack just wandering aimlessly through the universe is the most traumatic thing I can imagine. He tries so hard to not be human, because it hurts so much when he falls in love and people die (which he invariably does, and they invariably do), but he can't help it. But he needs people who love him, who he can love. He needs a team. Even if he'll blame himself for their deaths, even if they would never even think of blaming him. But that final scene on the hill was just utterly heartbreaking (and I'm tearing up even thinking about it) to see Jack becoming the bitter, lonely and angry Jack from 1965 (or even 1899). That's just not Jack - that's his defence mechanism against the world, against love, against the pain of losing everyone, and while it's understandable for the character, as far as I can see, that's the most horrible ending that he could possibly ever have.
Even Gwen without Torchwood is sad, but she's got Rhys, and a baby (and I'm not going to start talking about how it bothers me that that's a happy-ish ending), and Ianto's dead, which is probably for the best because there is no coming back from this for Jack, as far as I can see. Not after what happened with his grandson.
I think I'll almost be more okay with it if it's the final episode ever, and they don't make a series 4. I just don't see a way to make a series 4 that I would be in any way comfortable with out of this.
But yes. Now I have a very expensive ticket to Hub 3 for when I'm in the UK in October, and I'm not even sure I'll feel like going then. I'm not boycotting or anything, and for now I still absolutely love the show, but when something I love ends, and I just don't connect to any of the characters that are left, or any of the ways of bringing back the ones I adore (including Jack, in this case), I tend to just.. lose interest. And that upsets me. I think I'm actually mourning what I'm thinking will probably be the end of my fandom, as much as the things that happened in the show itself. I don't want to lose interest in this fandom, but I'm not sure I'll be able to help it. *clings to it*
I'm not very good at AU. I really, really wish I was sometimes, though.
Y'know, I've loved this show - loved it more than Harry Potter, and I stuck with that for like 5 or 6 years as my solitary fandom - if you ask anyone in my RL, I was utterly obsessed. I loved Torchwood more. Not sure if that was a reaction to things in my life, and that maybe I needed something to fill gaps in various parts of my life (yay, fandom-as-therapy, who needs RL, amiright. Er. *sigh*). I might have talked about it less, as none of my RL friends even really watch it (and most of those that do think it's kind of crap), and I'm spectacularly shy online, so it's just been this thing that I've immersed myself in for the past two years or so. I mean, hell, I even spent 3 days in Cardiff to watch filming last year, went to a fucking convention on the other side of the planet, and it was one of the best things I've ever done. I fucking loved this show. But I'm worried that I won't be able to sustain interest in it anymore, like in Harry Potter, when that ended and killed all of my favourite characters. But at least I knew it was going to end, y'know? I was prepared. But I still lost interest rapidly after the final book, and now I don't even particularly care about the sixth movie.
With this series of Torchwood, though, I've been so unbelievably excited to see it ever since I watched them filming in October last year. Actually, I've been wanting to see it since the second I finished watching Exit Wounds, but especially since seeing it filmed. That was such a special thing for me, because - living in Australia - that whole side of things was just so far removed. And then, all at once, I got to see all the landmarks and places that were in the show, and I got to see them filming the show, got to see Gareth playing Ianto in person, and Eve playign Gwen, and even got to meet half the cast, got a hug from Barrowman, and got to meet heaps of other fans, and it was just brilliant, and made me love it even more. Hell, this is the show that made me think seriously about getting into TV writing as a career (which turns out to be a depressingly bleak area of opportunity in this country, but that's not really the point)
But now it feels like it's all over, and it feels like all that talk of how happy the fans will be about the series (and yes, the Jack/Ianto relationship - did they really think that fans would like that ending?) was just disingenuous. Not to mention all this talk of series 4, because - while I'm sure it's possible - I can't imagine it ever being the same. Ever. They never mentioned big endings, or going out with a bang. A week ago, I thought that - whatever happens to Ianto, or any of the other characters - at least there could be another series that I might be able to love. But I'm sorry, I do think they might have lost me with this one. Because even if Jack comes back, even if Gwen wants to go back to Torchwood, even if they recruit new people, even if they rebuild the Hub, even if they buy a new SUV, they've killed off three out of the five characters that we became so invested in over the past few years, in the space of four episodes, even if those four episodes aired like over a year apart.
But I'm going back to the UK later this year, and I predict that I'm just going to start bawling as soon as I see the Millennium Centre (and yes, I totally get that if I'm still this upset in three or four months' time, that will be kind of pathetic - but give me a break, the wounds are still raw and I have absolutely no sense of perspective right now). And while a small, devastated part of me wants to agree with the people who say that this series has just been a kick in the teeth for all the loyal fans that stuck by the show while it was - frankly - kind of crap, I'm not bitter. I just want to curl up in a ball and cry.
In conclusion, god I fucking loved this show. Thank you for everything, while it lasted. If there's a series 4, I'll probably watch, and I'll watch Jack on Doctor Who, but I sincerely doubt it can ever be my Torchwood anymore. Goodbye, show. I'll miss you. :'(